


After Decimation

by prestissimo



Series: mortal!bloodslaveAU [2]
Category: Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Slavery, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, British Politics, Drabble, Fantasy Politics, Gen, Nicolas de Politician, Politics, Post-War, Sinister Plots, Tumblr Ask Box Fic, Voting, War Crimes, election, mortal!bloodslaveAU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-18
Updated: 2017-02-18
Packaged: 2018-09-25 06:44:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9807902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prestissimo/pseuds/prestissimo
Summary: Glimpses of life in the Empire after the Decimation of the human race and the Ascension of His Imperial Highness Prince Lestat de Lioncourt.Drabbles part of the mortal!bloodslaveAU universe on tumblr. (URLs in Chapter Notes)





	1. Political Theatre

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three glimpses from the Rise and Fall of The Right Honourable Nicolas de Lenfent, Second Scion of the Imperial Family and Member of Parliament for Soho District, London Governate, Bishopric of England of the Church of the Prelate, The British Annexation.
> 
> Table of Contents
> 
> I. Mid-Election season – Campaign Offices, The Right Honourable Nicolas de Lenfent  
> Soho District, London Governate (Formerly City of London)  
> Bishopric of England, The British Annexation
> 
> II. Recess – Summit for Initial Partition, White Cliffs of Dover  
> Bishopric of England, The British Annexation
> 
> III. The Vote to Add Human (Homo sapiens) Enfranchisement As A Constitutional Right  
> Chamber of the House of Commons, Houses of Parliament  
> Westminster Special District, London Governate (formerly City of London)  
> Bishopric of England, The British Annexation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Archived from http://echo-de-la-lumiere.tumblr.com/post/156565341730/au-mortal-bloodslave-when-nicolas-was-in

#### I. Mid-Election season – Campaign Offices, The Right Honourable Nicolas de Lenfent  
Soho District, London Governate (Formerly City of London)  
Bishopric of England, The British Annexation

Nicolas: “Oh _merde_ , I forgot to take out the rubbish. What are you doing here?”

Antonio: “ _Chinga tu madre_ , _cabrón_.”

Nicolas: “ _Díos mio_ , that mouth, Doctor Cuervo.”

Antonio: “ _Alors_ , your complete lack of shame, _Monseigneur_ de Lenfent. ‘The Harlech Annexation’? I didn’t think I’d find you here, at least whole.”

Nicolas: “The public eye protects me. So do you have news for me?”

Antonio: “What makes you so sure I have news?”

Nicolas: “Why would you have made the journey if you did not have some urgent affair to report?”

Antonio: “We’ve intercepted disturbing intel.”

Nicolas: “Aha.”

Antonio: "Shut up and listen to me. The opposition is petitioning to have the records of your tribunal hearing unsealed. Francis Pink is going to be interviewed on _Nation Tonight_  in two hours’ time and they are certainly going to ask him about his party’s motives.”

Nicolas: "So? Nini—”

Antonio: “For the last time, I am not Italian, you ignorant _fuck!_ This is serious! This could torpedo your candidacy! _”_

 _Nicolas: “…_ Beg pardon. _Antonio_. My past holds no threat to me. I have spoken with my future constituents. They _understand_. These people, they know what it is like to lose yourself, and find salvation in the arms of your tormentor.”

Antonio: “Nicolas, you dumb motherfucker. You haven’t found sudden kinship with humanity at the eleventh hour. These people are still your _prey_. Look at me when I’m fucking talking to you!”

Nicolas: “What would you like me to say? So they’re a desperate, dying race, willing to claw onto any pitying hand from on high that gives them leave to scrabble for _existence_. What of it? I would not see the human spirit so _defiled_.”

Antonio: “You weren’t…coherent, for your trial, Nic. You were…”

Nicolas: “Monstrous?”

Antonio: “Yes.”

Nicolas: “A moment. Philippa?”

Philippa: “Yeah?”

Nicolas: “Can you get me on _Nation Tonight_  in two hours? I would like to help a distinguished colleague answer some questions.”

Philippa: “You want me to get _you_ , uncensored, on a live television show?”

Nicolas: “ _Oui_.”

Philippa: “In the height of campaign season?”

Nicolas: “Yes?”

Philippa: “So you can yell at your opponent and make him feel bad for existing?”

Nicolas: “Ye–wait, what?”

Antonio: “Yes. He is going to make someone regret going into politics. Will there be a problem, my dear?”

Philippa: “You don’t trust me? Dr. Cuervo, you—”

Nicolas: “ _Merci, non.”_

Philippa: “Mmpf that’s my _face_  youfmh—”

Nicolas: “Just let me know when the car is ready, _merci_. Careful, the door.”

Antonio: “A case could be made for treating your human assistant with more care.”

Nicolas: “She knew what she was getting into when she signed up for this. Now, tell me all the horrid things I did in the war, so I can give Pink a white feather to shit on.”

Antonio: “What am I, your campaign advisor?”

Nicolas: “Yes, because nobody got me a new one.”

Antonio: “Oh that’s right, you ate the last one. Oh dear. That poor girl. Does Philippa know?”

Nicolas: “Who do you think got rid of the body?”

* * *

 

#### II. Recess – Summit for Initial Partition, White Cliffs of Dover  
**Bishopric of England, The British Annexation**

Even the bleariest mortal eye would be able to spot it. In the pitch blackness of the Channel, his homeland beckoned across the water. Its grey outlines, the small distant cottages that only a vampire’s eye could detect, kept dark because a decade of war transformed any small beacon in the night into a glaring target. 

 _“_ Cap _Gris Nez.”_

 _“_ Beg pardon?” He turned to greet the speaker and resisted the urge to scratch his nose. The idea of an eternity of maintaining that moustache made him itch. Bad enough that his own maker had not even given him the decency of shaving what youthful cast of stubble his mortal body had been able to produce. (The Dollar Shave Club had been a godsend.)

“That’s what the humans called that small spit of land. Cap Gris Nez.”

“That’s absurd.”

“Humans.”

“I thought it was called Dunkirk.”

“Ah, for that you’ll want somewhere, follow my finger, oh, thereabouts.”

“Are you here to educate me on how to anthropomorphize geographical features or are we going for the mercy killing instead tonight?”

“We are all taken aback. His books never portray you as…”

“Sane?”

“I was going to go with ‘articulate’ or quite possibly, ‘this much of a little bitch,’ but ‘sane’ is probably more charitable. ‘Reckless’ would not be too far from the truth.”

He turned his eyes away and looked back out across the water. As the Honourable Member for what was formerly the borough of Camden nattered away about Nicolas’ conduct on the House floor, he closed his eyes and tried to focus on the sound of his bones, dead and still and silent, shifting minutely inside his flesh. He imagined the waves travelling down his spine, running over his (perfectly-healed) left tibia, his calcaneus, the dusty chalk of old dead things from long ago. _Would you have me with you, dearly departed algae? When my work is done, may I rest at last?_

“Lenfent, are you listening?” 

“What? Oh. Sorry.”

“How. Many. Votes.”

“There’s still Chassaigne, Krazinski, Buillard, Shiu, and O’Connell.”

“That’s it? Christ, do you sleep?”

“As much as you do.”

“I’ll take Shiu and O’Connell. We’re in the same bridge club.”

“Why does that not even surprise me?”

“Shut your face. We won’t get Chassaigne and Krazinski. You shot yourself in the foot with those two.”

“It’s not my fault I ate their mothers. How was I supposed to know someone would turn those little Ruthvens? And when did I become the face of this? Anyway, what about Buillard?”

“I didn’t think he’d even give you an appointment. At least Chassaigne and Krazinski would ask Armand before going after you.”

“I may owe Armand my life, but that does not give him any license to me! And do not concern yourself with Buillard. I know what he wants, and I can give it to him.”

“Oh Nicki, no. You can’t mean that.”

“What is the matter, _mon_   _cher_ Jérôme? Have I disturbed your disposition?” He cocked an eyebrow at his friend, but a sound in the soft grass turned both their heads. A slender figure was outlined beneath the half-moon, and she raised a hand to call them back inside.

“But you’d never see Paris again.”

“Soon it won’t matter.”

Jérôme gripped Nicolas’ arm with a sudden jerk, almost as if in protection. 

“Don’t.”

The two looked upon one another in a tense silence as Nicolas’ assistant neared.

“Hey! Asshole! Recess is over. Move both your asses.”

“I can’t believe you let her talk to you like that.”

“Now who’s sounding speciesist?”

“Point taken, but you know as well as I do this wasn’t evolutionary.”

“I leave that to the acolytes of _scientia_  (Latin for ‘science’). In the—”

“Lenfent, if you don’t get your ass in here right now and stop them from making me a fucking _slave_ , I am gonna take a handsaw and chop off _all’a your limbs_!”

“Jesus.”

“Quite. Let’s go, shall we?”

“ _Nicolas! Hands!”_

_“Yes, Philippa!”  
_

* * *

 

#### III. The Vote to Add Human ( _Homo sapiens_ ) Enfranchisement As A Constitutional Right  
Chamber of the House of Commons, Houses of Parliament  
Westminster Special District, London Governate (formerly City of London)  
Bishopric of England, The British Annexation

It was a pity, Nicolas thought, that the Commons had green cushions. Now that there was not a single Warm Member of Parliament in either House, people had started to bring snacks. Those members of his species with more of a ribald flair for the _grand guignol_  would intentionally spill blood from time to time, on kerchief or flask, pantomiming at being human.

His ankles were crossed on the back of the bench in front of him, and at the angle of his slouch, his straightened legs rendered him a tidy cream-colored check mark against the green of the seat. The Member from Finsbury District was in the process of concluding her remaining reservations about a de facto outnumbering of the wolves by the sheep. Nicolas raised a hand, displaying a beautifully-embroidered unfurling of blood-red poppies trailing from his sleeve down his chest before wrapping around the back of his knee.

By now he had made a name for himself on the campaign trail, if not for his radical views on human abolition, then on the elaborate embroidery that featured in each one of his colourful and lush suits. As a vampire with the training of a draper’s son, Nicolas’ embroidery skills were unparalleled for their attention to the warp and weft of the fibres. No one could quite mimic the liveliness of his designs, the irreverence for convention pulled off so elegantly he would never be tossed out for inadequate dress.

He had Armand to thank, for saving him from Burning, for taking care of him all these years, for loving Nicolas even when he was being unloveable. It was Armand who had first inspired him to paint with thread. 

“The Speaker recognizes _Monseigneur_ de Lenfent. You have the floor, _votre grandeur_.”

Nicolas stood and gave a small bow others might deride as “fussy” at worst and describe as “tidy” at best. It was his way of making sure he didn’t get carried away before an audience. Armand had taught him that military rigor was best for keeping himself coherent and orderly. Order was the secret to Nicolas’ equanimity. It was the disorder of his own fate that had begun the vicious cycle that first doomed him. Armand had worked for decades to determine what kind of order Nicolas needed.

He had Armand to thank for so much.

“Thank you, Mister Speaker. I must applaud Christiane for her rousing demonstration of why her Finsbury constituents ought never relocate to the country, for fear of miscounting their livestock. 

“Can any one of the respectable Members of Parliament in this room reasonably estimate how many humans would even be of voting age under the provisions before us tonight? How many coherent, active, presently-participating vampires are registered voters? 

“Even if every single Warm vote went to one candidate or one cause, the outcome would be Cold. We live in a chilly world, my fellow demons, and we may rule it gracefully for ever more so long as we preserve the pre-existing conditions that so soothed the docile spirits of our unsuspecting prey.

“Should we rouse their ire, and waste all that blood on war and riots and irritating public transportation delays? Nobody wants to spend eternity waiting for them to clear a corpse from the rails or stop for weapon sweeps. What do you want? An eternity waiting for your train to arrive, or an eternity with your train of happily but inconsequentially voting humans to wait on you?”

He sat down to a subdued chorus of snapping fingers, clapping in the House of Commons having been considered gauche since 2103. There were only a few more minutes of debate left. The Member for Islington stood.

Nicolas caught Antonio’s eye across the way and gave a single solemn nod. His friend nodded back. The violinist scanned the full benches for their allies, vampires all. There was Jérôme, Angela, Jean-Charles, Haneen, and Sarah at the very top row. Jérôme was smiling, which most likely meant they had gotten the votes they needed. By hook or by crook, they had given humans as much mastery of their own destiny as they were able.

“We will reconvene tomorrow evening at 7 o’clock for a final vote tally. I declare this session adjourned.”


	2. Pilcher and the Vote

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Geoffrey Pilcher, proprietor of the music supply shop preferred by the Right Honourable Nicolas de Lenfent himself, gives the royal concertmaster's new mortal twins a history lesson.
> 
> Originally posted at http://echo-de-la-lumiere.tumblr.com/post/149279225875/mortalbloodslaveau-closed.

“Boys,” Pilcher said gravely, and put down his bowl of soup. “You can do whatever you like in that house and I doubt he would stop you. I doubt you could get him to look up from his music. But do not ask about slaves.” He looked carefully out of the room towards the front of the shop, where someone looked in the glass door before giving up. He waited an interval, then scooted a little closer to them even in this cramped space. He sighed, and then nodded to himself, his wisps of white hair fluffing in the air.

“When I was a wee bairn,” he began with no small measure of comical exaggeration, “the older boys at the Nursery were very excited about something one day. A leech—pardon me—a _vampire_  had been _elected_  to a seat in Parliament, and he was going to fight for us to have _rights_. _Human_  adults had _chosen_  a _vampire_ to represent them, a friend to humans, and what was more, it was a member of the Royal Family, someone of the Coven of the Articulate himself! 

“I remember that evening very clearly. Life at the Nursery is so peaceful that I had forgotten what excitement was until that night. But even the Crown Prince Lestat was distraught. Imagine, a member of His own Family, someone who had fought in the war under His banner!

“For once, there were no quarrels over what to listen to on the wireless. Everybody wanted to hear this vampire’s speeches, about how we should be allowed to strive beyond our animal natures. He spoke about things I’d never heard of, but that made the older boys whoop and chant them around the room. Self-determination. The pursuit of happiness. Fundamental rights of man. First he said it in those old languages, English, French. But then he said it in Common, too, which not a lot of vampires know, so _we_  could hear it. So humans could listen and demand better.”

He took a sip of his tea and held it in both hands. His body seemed to shrink a little, as if his chest was suddenly sunken with the weight of years.

“I must have been, oh, about three years old. There was going to be something called a vote. They were going to do something to human ownership. It was a word I can’t recall anymore, a-something. But it meant we didn’t have to work for vampires if we didn’t want to. It meant we would be _free_.” He said it hushed, as if the very word was banned. His next words came in a rush, as if now no longer caged, they could not wait to be expressed.

“But Nicolas didn’t show, they said. A number of allies hadn’t. The Prelate himself had visited him the night before, in his home. His car was still there, with its black sash of mourning. We knew back then it was for mourning, but for what or whom, nobody knew. It didn’t leave for three nights. People pretended nothing had happened. Humans disappeared. It was all as if the Prelate had cast a spell over all of us. I didn’t even want to ask what had happened. We didn’t hear about him again until years later, when the Prelate made him the Royal Concertmaster.”

He sipped at his tea again, but it seeped cold into his gut. And now he informed on the vampire whom the human race had once called ‘friend’, for the Prelate, a dark bogeyman that governed the Empire for their benevolent but ill-informed Crown Prince. 

“And now he comes and buys rosin and musical instruments from me. I have known him since I was apprenticed and not once have I ever felt less than him, but not once have I ever heard him say anything that wasn’t about music.”


End file.
